Samarkand By Jama sadikov – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=82671171
Samarkand is a tourism center
Samarkand – an honorable past with a great future, can be called one of the greatest masterpieces not only of Central Asia, but also of the world. Even if the world’s greatest poets and philosophers called it the garden of the heart, the jewel of the East, the mirror of the world, and even the face of the earth, they would not have been able to describe all the beauty and wealth of this beautiful city.
This city has given birth to many great people in its bosom, raised them and is still keeping them in its bosom. The cultural heritage of Samarkand is very great. This city, which has been the center of various countries for centuries, has been the main center of the Great Silk Road. The great world-lover Amir Temur chose this city as the capital of his kingdom and developed the city as a political, cultural and educational center. Thousands of madrasahs, mosques, and gardens were built in Samarkand during the Timurid period. Over the years, the madrasahs he built have not lost their strength.
During the years of independence, reconstruction works were carried out throughout the city in order to increase the touristic character of Samarkand. At the beginning of the 21st century, the city was included in the UNESCO World Heritage List under the name “Samarkand – Crossroads of Cultures”! Today, the most visible places of the city are Registan ensemble, Shahi Zinda, Gori Amir complex and others. More than five million tourists from all over the world visit the city every year to enjoy its beauty.
In recent years, as a result of the work carried out by the government to develop tourism in the country, the tourist center of Samarkand was built in the city. Four-five-star hotels, conference halls, entertainment centers, and an eternal city were built there. Journalists of the prestigious European publication note that the opening of the Silk Road Samarkand complex will increase the flow of tourists to Uzbekistan. With the attention of our state, the city is becoming more beautiful year by year, which leads to rapid growth of domestic and foreign tourism. The growth of tourism also affects the development of economic and social spheres in Samarkand.
I dreamed and found you young again somehow transported across the Atlantic, past Gibraltar then Corsica, over the waves of the Mediterranean. I arrived quite dashing in a light linen suit and polished Italian shoes, in a little white sportscar, over ancient brick streets and through Di Chirico piazzas and skewed Zeffirelli perspectives at your flat in Rome set curiously in the forum at the edge of the Palatine Hill. I took you in my arms, circled your waist, and my palm found the small of your back.
You twirled for me, flipping the hem of your dress, a black and white print in tiny cubist abstractions. We danced spinning through your bright rooms with the high ceilings like a chiesa expecting Raphael above our heads – an Assumption or an Ascension. You’d arranged vases of flowers, and the tables and chairs were strewn with opened books, chipped china, and the remains of bread and the dregs of wine from the night before. The windows were tall and opened wide, curtains drifting in the breeze, and allowed the shouts and cheers of scruffy boys kicking a soccer ball outside. And there was a jumpy, comedic Italian tune playing from the phonograph – the kind of music that makes you want to whirl around the kitchen with your mother or gambol with your little sister balanced on your shoes.
So pretty and poised, you were Audrey Hepburn in Roman Holiday after she got her hair cut short, raced Gregory Peck on a Vespa, and stuck her hand in the Mouth of Truth. Giddy, we laughed and ached and wept, immediately in love again. Your bedroom walls and the quaint watercolors you bought of the Pantheon, Colosseum, Spanish Steps, Trevi Fountain, and that little temple of Portunus near the Tiber – the very ruins around us seemed to laugh too, happy for us. But when I leaned in to kiss you, our lips refused to touch, to meet as willing participants in a prelude to desire. I heard, “Remember, you’re married.” Instantly I returned flying back across the ocean in my little white convertible to that other bliss I’d live after waking. And that was all. That was enough.
Christopher Bernard will be reading at the Poets for Palestine SF Marathon Reading at Bird and Beckett Bookstore. For a donation of any amount to the Middle East Children’s Alliance, poets can come and read at any time at the store on October 14th, Indigenous People’s Day. Please feel welcome to sign up here or email poetsforpalestinesf@gmail.com to be scheduled.
A Day in October
A child holds his breath
like a frightened pet to his chest.
*
His eye peers through a hole
in the wall of his night room,
in the acid dust of siege
and cage of bone and blood,
in the code of an algorithm
governing AI
that has made the ineluctable
decision he shall die.
*
His eye, brown as honey,
watches you, intently.
*
It is like the eye in a castle wall
where hungry defenders await the burning
arrow vaulting through a sky
dark as velvet,
to break a mother’s shield
and wipe her tears with ashes
*
and build in pillars of fire
a school where future terrorists
(according to the omniscient
and infallible AI),
are learning, even now, their alphabet.
*
_____
Christopher Bernard is an award-winning poet, novelist, and essayist. His book The Socialist’s Garden of Verses won a PEN Oakland Josephine Miles Award in 2021 and was named one of 2021’s “Top 100 Indie Books.”
Azerbaeva Perizat Bayrambay qizi- a student of school number 49
Annotation- this article discusses about the shortage of water, along with its repercussions and methods to prevent it.
Keywords – natural resource, environment, new technologies, water shortage, drip irrigation.
Water is the source of life, because there is no life without water. Water is life, which has had an incomparable influence on the evolution of livelihoods, environment, and climate changes for millions of years. It should be noted that the demand and need for water is increasing more than ever. As a result, there is a water shortage all over the world.
Water is:
: composition of 55-65% (up to 80% in children) of the human body
: one of the most used and diminishing resources on our planet
: One of the factors that cause interstate threats and wars in the 21st century
: although it covers more than 70% of the land, only 3% of it is suitable for drinking.
: one of the causes of climate migration and the increase of immigrants around the world
A person without water can live up to 1 week at most. In 2023, 2 billion people, that is, a quarter of the world’s population, will be without clean drinking water, and in the next 10 years, 700 million people, that is, we will join them [1]. So, as written above, the topic is relevant, it needs to be written and read!
“It is necessary to form a collective understanding about the economical use of water. In order not to provoke an environmental virus that leads to economic and political pathology,” said Bori Olikhanov, chairman of the Committee on Development of the Aral Bay Region of the Oliy Majlis.¾ of the world is water. Can’t we turn it into drinking water? Yes, but this is a very expensive process.
According to the standards of the World Health Organization, one person needs 50-100 liters of water per day. In rural areas of Africa, a person consumes 10-20 liters of water per day, which is significantly lower than usual. Saudi Arabia is the leading country in drinking water consumption (500 liters of water per person per day) [1].
The main part of fresh water, i.e. 40%, is groundwater. Extracting them is, firstly, expensive, secondly, labor-intensive, and thirdly, a temporary solution that runs out and eventually dries up underground wells and leads to a water crisis.Although rivers and dams are important for water supply, they only contain about 1% of fresh water. alternating with snow.Fresh water extraction from icebergs and glaciers is also discussed. But it is not known what consequences such projects will have on the ecology of our planet, apart from the fact that it is not technically feasible at the moment.According to experts’ calculations, by 2050, water resources are expected to decrease by 5% in the Sirdarya basin and 15% in the Amudarya basin [2], and the demand for water will increase by 50%. Today, about 2 billion people on earth need clean drinking water, and more than 2 billion 300 million people are forced to consume food that does not meet sanitary requirements.
On February 8 of this year, President Shavkat Mirziyoyev held a meeting on improving drinking water supply in the regions. The main focus was on providing the population with clean drinking water.After the order of the President of the Republic of Uzbekistan on December 27, 2018, “On urgent measures to create favorable conditions for the widespread use of drip irrigation technology in the cultivation of cotton raw materials”, positive projects will be implemented to prevent water wastage. started [3].The water-related problems of the Central Asian countries were discussed in Tashkent: on January 18, a roundtable discussion was held in the capital of Uzbekistan on the topic “Problems and prospects of effective use of water resources of Russia and Central Asia.”
According to the forecasts of the World Bank, the lack of clean drinking water in Central Asia will cause the GDP to decrease by 11%. 80-90% of water resources in the region are used in agriculture. The total area of irrigated land in the region is 7.695 million, and in Uzbekistan it is 4.2 million [4].It is not difficult to imagine the consequences of a shortage of a strategically important resource. This means a threat to the production of agricultural products, a decrease in the volume of exports, and a deterioration in the quality of life of the population engaged in agriculture.What is the solution to the problem?
“Drip irrigation systems. The system is being installed, but it is necessary to expand its coverage. We need to create a system to encourage farmers to introduce drip irrigation, as well as increase water tariffs,” says the director of the “Ma’no” research center. Bakhtiyar Ergashev [4].Director of the Institute of Socio-Economic Research, Dr. Alexey Zubes, believes that Russia can help in these matters [4].
Another important recognition is that Uzbekistan ranks first in Central Asia, second among the CIS countries, fourth in Asia and 13th in the world in terms of introducing water-saving technologies [2].
In conclusion, water scarcity is a global problem of the century, so all the countries of the world should fight it together, help each other, and the population should follow the culture of using water. Because as the water problem grows in a place, the hope of life in that place fades away. If this problem is not prevented, living creatures will be forced to migrate to wetlands.
In my opinion, we need to prevent this problem from becoming bigger like the “Island problem” as soon as possible, and I think that the people of the world should understand that the natural resource will end one day and use it sparingly for the sake of future generations.
After the New Year, we have a new neighbor, Baba Katya. She was a short, plump woman with glasses, rather intelligent-looking, always wrapped in several layers of clothing. When she stopped by, a few creepy-looking men probably dragged all sorts of things for two hours: chests, parcels, some furniture into her room, which was as big as a hall.
The check-in process attracted Alexey and me’s attention, and we sat in the hallway and silently watched what was happening. At some point, one of these thuggish-looking workers barked at my brother and me, and we, frightened, retreated to our room. Here, to fill up the feeling of confidence, we began to sprinkle these two and our neighbor with curses and all sorts of nicknames.
– These two are savages! – I said, waving my arms.
– And the neighbor? She’s no better! Bourgeois! – my brother answered.
One day after school, when my brother and I were walking down the hallway, the door to the new neighbor’s room was open. It has been several weeks since she moved in. Torn by curiosity, we decided to carefully look in to see the treasures she was hiding.
Through the slightly open door we could see several antique cabinets, statues, tapestries, paintings. Meanwhile, the hostess of the room came up to us along the corridor. My brother and I took a step back, expecting reproaches or threats, but something completely unexpected happened. Seeing our undisguised interest in the contents of the room, Baba Katya smiled slightly.
Come on in, guys, – she invited my brother and me.
Her brother was more talkative, as always, and asked her a lot of questions. He had a talent for talking to people, so later he became a famous journalist and traveled a lot around the country and the world.
So, we managed to find out that baba Katya, as the whole apartment called her, is actually Ekaterina Vasilyeva, a well-known restorer with experience. For several years now, she has been engaged in restorations for the state museums of Leningrad, and what struck me most of all, she even worked at home, in conditions when museums were closed or even mothballed. And all these “treasures” are her works that have been restored or are just waiting in the wings.
– Why did you move in with us? Has your house been bombed? Alexey continued his inquiries.
– No, it’s worse… This is not a childish story…” she tried to get away from this topic.
– We are already adults, please tell us! – my brother and I did not let up.
Baba Katya stopped talking, looked at the window, then back at us. She went to the stove in the corner of the room, put a scorcher in it, put the kettle on and slowly began her creepy story.
– About a month ago, a story happened that changed my life and disappointed people forever. I used to live in the central district, also in a communal apartment. I had two rooms there – one bedroom, the second, a larger one, a workshop for restoration. Our apartment has always been friendly, we all knew each other for many years and were almost like family. Only one neighbor was weird, I don’t even want to call her by her first name. After her divorce from her husband, something broke inside her… But even then she had not yet poisoned our way of life. With the onset of the blockade, our apartment began to change, many left. The corridors began to empty.
In the autumn, the famine began, then it became even worse, our neighbors began to disappear. The authorities came to us a couple of times, and then our neighbor began to show incredible diligence in finding and assisting the authorities. She told all sorts of stories, saying that they had gone to their relatives in the village, and those had died in the raid. Strangely enough, everyone believed her.
Then she stopped talking. I saw a tear creeping down the wrinkled cheek of an elderly woman. After a moment of silence, gathering her strength, she continued:
– One day, I worked late and, as it seemed to me, I was not sleeping alone in the apartment. Then a disheveled and scared neighbor flew into my workshop, saying that some strange man of terrible appearance was walking in our hallway. I calmed her down by suggesting that we look at this stranger together. She agreed, on the condition that we take a poker for protection. So we left my room, I went ahead and carried a lamp, and she followed me with a poker.
We walked along the dark corridor for a while until I felt a blow on the back of my head and lost consciousness. I came to my senses, probably after a quarter of an hour, I was lying on the floor in my neighbor’s room, next to her bed. The first thing that caught my eye was the partially butchered body of the girl, which was hidden under the bed. It hit me like an electric shock, I immediately understood everything and hid, the neighbor was standing with her back to me in the other corner and, leaning over the table, sorting knives. I got up quietly, and the poker was lying on the bed.
Grabbing her, I slapped my neighbor on the back without looking at her and ran out of the apartment and onto the street with the last of my strength. My head hurt terribly, and my heart was pounding so hard that it seemed like it was going to pop out of my chest. So I ran through several streets until I bumped into two young soldiers who turned out to be NKVD officers. Through tears, I told them everything. After taking me to some kind of duty station, they hurried to our apartment…
She paused again, sighed, and finished her story with confidence in her voice.
– The remains of five people were found in her room, as the investigation established, for several months she had not only killed and eaten acquaintances, but also sold or changed the meat of victims in markets in different areas. As far as I know, she was shot on the same day, and I could no longer stay in that apartment and moved in with you.
The kettle whistled, Baba Katya covered her face with her hands. There was horror and shame on my brother’s face, and we both regretted our persistence, curiosity and prejudice about this brave woman. I went up to her and hugged her a little, she calmed down, poured tea for us and gave us one candy, it was an incredible rarity, my brother and I had not seen any sweets anywhere for more than six months.
Go to your room in peace, – Baba Katya said to us at parting, – And be careful on the street, and in general with strangers.
